Altruistic World Online Library

A gathering of auxiliary materials from various sources, with acknowledgment and gratitude, for the use of all pursuant to the Fair Use and Library exemptions, and common law right of free speech for non-profit purposes.

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THE COMING WAR WITH RUSSIA
Those old enough to remember when President Clinton's penis was a big news item will also remember the "Peace Dividend," that the world was going to be able to cash now that that nasty cold war was over. But guess what? Those spies didn't want to come in from the Cold, so while the planet is heating up, the political environment is dropping to sub-zero temperatures. It's deja vu all over again.

Another View on 9/11
What you are allowed to think and what you do think are two different things, aren't they? That's another way of saying that this forum may be NSFW, if your boss is a Republican. A liberal won't fire you for it, but they'll laugh at you in the break room and you may not get promoted. Unless you're an engineer, of course, in which your obsession with facing reality is not actually a career-disabling disability.

Ancien Regime
That's French for "the ancient system," as in the ancient system of feudal privileges and the exercise of autocratic power over the peasants. The ancien regime never goes away, like vampires and dinosaur bones they are always hidden in the earth, exercising a mysterious influence. It is not paranoia to believe that the elites scheme against the common man. Inform yourself about their schemes here.

Book Reviews
Writing about books is a legitimate exercise of scholarship. Sometimes you don't want to read the book, but you want to know about it. Reading a review might not help, of course, since many reviewers actually tell you more about themselves than the book they are reviewing. But, either way, you can say you read about the book.

Correcting Nazi Revisionism
The fact that Israel is an apartheid state oppressing Palestinians for pathological reasons does not mean that the holocaust of European Jewry did not happen or should be minimized with slaughterhouse statistics. Some things need to be rebutted with obvious facts and we do a little of that here.

Illustrated Screenplays
Possibly better than tootsie rolls, illustrated screenplays are tasty little nuggets of cinematic flavor in a convenient pdf wrapper. Download and read your favorite movie in a quarter of the time it takes to watch it. And you can grab quotes and images.

Intellectual Property
The concept of intellectual property strikes people as elusive. Try this explanation. Your name is Ali Baba, and you have tailed the thieves to their hideout. You know that the password that opens the cave is "Open Sesame." Thanks to your possession of the password, you gain access to all the wealth the thieves have painfully stolen. That password is "intellectual property." The stolen goods are personal property. By having the intellectual property you can acquire a lot of personal property. Get it?

Investigations of Government
Your relationship with government is simple: government knows everything about you, and you know nothing about government. In practice this means government can do whatever it wants to you before you know it's going to happen. Government policy makers think this is a good way of ensuring citizen compliance. Thus, all of these investigations are retrospective -- they look back at the squirrely shit that government has pulled, and occasionally wring their hands about trying to avoid it happening in the future. Not inspiring reading, but necessary if you are to face the cold reality that Big Brother is more than watching.

Mass Murderers
Living as we do in an assassinocracy, government by those who are left, it behooves us to think deeply on the topic of mass murder. For example, whenever a political assassination occurs, many witnesses are also dispatched to that realm from whence no testimony issues. The notion that murderers are merely evil is quite misleading. Most often, they are employed.

Media Violence
Let's see if I have it right -- Hollywood sends movies around the world that broadcast the message of freedom so loudly that it brought down the Berlin Wall and caused the Soviet Union to collapse. Here at home the power of media is very weak. Even seeing thousands and thousands of murders at an early age will not cause a child to be more disposed to violence. The most brutal misogynistic sexual violence never causes violent crime against women. Do not attempt to maintain both of these concepts in your mind simultaneously. It could damage your brain.

Ralph Nader
When I was 14 years old, I heard Ralph Nader say that box cereal was less nutritious than the box it came in, and you'd get more nutrition out of tearing up the box and pouring sugar and milk over it, and eating that for breakfast. That's the kind of genius that Ralph Nader produces constantly, and why his ideas changed the world for Americans more than perhaps any political thinker of the late 20th century. He remains more relevant than virtually every other political thinker currently on the scene.

Peace Initiatives
Peaceful relations among humans on earth, and peaceful relations between humans and the other life forms on the planet, are imperative for the survival of planet earth as a habitat for life as we know it. Making the achievement of peace an affirmative goal for all humanity is noble and essential.

Philosophy
Every person is a philosopher by nature; however, we are quickly dissuaded from this delightful activity by those who call philosophy impractical. But there is nothing more practical than knowing who you are and what you think. Try it sometime.

Police Corruption: The Crime Starts When the Cops Show Up
There are a million excuses for police corruption -- that they're underpaid, that they suffer stress, that their wives hate them, that they eat too many donuts, that their kids hate them, and that liberals use them as whipping boys. Read the official reports to hear the dreary recitation of why those who administer the laws never seem to obey them.

Political Science
"Science," the Greek word for knowledge, when appended to the word "political," creates what seems like an oxymoron. For who could claim to know politics? More complicated than any game, most people who play it become addicts and die without understanding what they were addicted to. The rest of us suffer under their malpractice as our "leaders." A truer case of the blind leading the blind could not be found. Plumb the depths of confusion here.

Psychology
What is the mind? What is the mind of a human? What is the mind of the one who investigates the human? Can the human mind understand itself? Can a human mind understand the mind of an other? This is psychology.

Religion and Cults
The impulse to believe the absurd when presented with the unknowable is called religion. Whether this is wise or unwise is the domain of doctrine. Once you understand someone's doctrine, you understand their rationale for believing the absurd. At that point, it may no longer seem absurd. You can get to both sides of this conondrum from here.

Sadism
Possibly the world's most popular inclination, the impulse to export your suffering to another seems to be near-universal. Not confined to any race, sex, or age category, the impulse to cause pain appears to well up from deep inside human beings. This is mysterious, because no one seems to enjoy pain when it is inflicted on them. Go figure.

Scholar's Jukebox
To study music, you have to listen to it. Music is an essential part of human culture. Often mistaken for a commodity, an error that classifies musicians as manufacturers of tunes, what is modernly called music is often designed for disposability, inoffensiveness, and speedy obsolescence. Not so the music that will be posted here, that will connect you with what is true, good, fine and enduring in humanity's struggle with a difficult, dazzling world.

Slavery 2.0: Racist Cops and the Prison Industrial Complex
The progress from Western colonial global expansion, and the construction of American wealth and industry on the backs of enslaved Blacks and Native peoples, followed by the abrupt "emancipation" of the slaves and their exodus from the South to the Northern cities, has led us to our current divided society. Divided by economic inequities and unequal access to social resources, the nation lives in a media dream of social harmony, or did until YouTube set its bed on fire. Now, it is common knowledge that our current system of brutal racist policing and punitive over-incarceration serves the dual purpose of maintaining racial prejudice and the inequities it justifies. Brief yourself on this late-breaking development in American history here.

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